A Fusion Breakthrough?

Lockheed's Skunk Works has announced a breakthrough in fusion research. Fusion is what powers the sun. It has the potential to generate electricity from the hydrogen in seawater.

Lockheed claims that they can have a working prototype of a fusion reactor in five years, and commercially available fusion power plants in ten years.

More incredibly, Lockheed claims that the reactor could be as small as seven by 10 feet -- small enough to fit on the back of a truck. A fusion-powered submarine could stay submerged indefinitely, getting its fuel (hydrogen) and air (oxygen) from seawater. A fusion-powered airplane could stay aloft for months.

Fission-powered subs can already stay submerged for months at a time. And practically speaking, aircraft require routine ground maintenance to avoid falling out of the sky. Where fusion is the real game-changer, though, is in generating electricity and spaceflight.

Generating Electricity
Lockheed says its fusion reactor could be plopped into existing 100 MW gas turbine power plant, replacing the methane-burning equipment with a fusion reactor and a heat exchanger.

Current nuclear reactors use fission, in which atoms of heavy elements like uranium are split to produce heat, which generates steam, which spins turbines to make electricity. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan used fission. The hydrogen bombs first detonated in the 1950s were fusion bombs: the intense heat and pressure required to fuse hydrogen atoms were produced by detonating fission devices.

Fission produces a lot of highly radioactive elements, such as plutonium, which need to be sequestered for thousands of years. Fission also produces high-speed neutrons (which is what causes fission reactions to proceed). If there are too many neutrons, the nuclear reaction can run away and detonate like an atomic bomb.

There are two major approaches to fusion for power generation: inertial confinement and magnetic confinement. The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory uses inertial confinement: giant lasers blast a pellet of hydrogen isotopes from all directions to produce high pressure and temperature.

The concept of magnetic confinement gained popular currency with Star Trek's "magnetic bottle," which they said contained antimatter. With fusion, magnetic fields are used to compress hydrogen plasma to very high pressures and temperatures, causing the atoms to fuse.

The sun does this using gravity instead of magnetic fields.

Both inertial and magnetic confinement fusion have been demonstrated in labs, but they have not achieved a sustained reaction, where they generate more energy than they consume.

Depending on exactly which reaction is used, fusion may use isotopes of hydrogen (deuterium and tritium) and produce harmless helium, or it may produce short-lived radioactive isotopes such as tritium (hydrogen 3). It typically produces neutrons, which have to be trapped to convert their energy to heat.

Magnetic confinement has been on the cusp of a breakthrough for fifty years. This time, Lockheed thinks that by reducing the size of the hardware and increasing the strength of the magnetic field with superconductors they will finally be able to make magnetic confinement work.

Revolutionizing Spaceflight
Rockets work on Newton's Third Law of equal and opposite reaction. They burn fuel, which is ejected out the nozzle, propelling the payload forward. The acceleration you achieve depends on the mass ejected and its velocity: the faster the propellant is ejected (specific impulse), the faster you go.

Hohmann Transfer Orbit

When current spacecraft go to other planets they fire a quick burst from their rocket engines to put themselves in an elliptical orbit (the yellow orbit in the diagram on the right) that starts at earth (the green orbit) and ends at Mars (the red orbit), where another burst of the engines is required to enter orbit around Mars. Chemical rockets cannot fire the whole time because they can't carry enough fuel to accelerate the whole way, because the engine has a low specific impulse.

Because our spacecraft require this "Hohmann transfer orbit," we only launch when the planets are properly aligned. That imposes a launch window that lasts a short time and doesn't recur for months or years.

"Ion" engines with higher specific impulse have been in design for decades. These use electrical fields to accelerate charged particles to speeds much higher than can be obtained by chemical rockets. The high specific impulse allows the ion engine to fire constantly, producing a constant thrust with a modest amount of propellant.

A fusion engine could produce an even higher specific impulse, with the speed of light being the only limit. With such a high specific impulse, it becomes possible to accelerate constantly at high thrust without running out of propellant.

It's within the realm of possibility that a fusion-powered spacecraft could get to the moon in a day by accelerating constantly at 1 g (the acceleration of earth's gravity) to the halfway point, flipping around and decelerating the rest of the way. Getting to Mars would take two to four days, depending on where earth and Mars are in their orbits.

Will It Melt Down or Blow Up Like a Hydrogen Bomb?
Fission reactors can melt down, like Chernobyl in Russia or Fukushima in Japan. They depend on control rods, cooling or other mechanical means to prevent the fission reaction from occurring too quickly. A fission reactor contains tons of uranium. If too many neutrons are being shot through the nuclear fuel, there's a chance of a runaway reaction and an atomic detonation, or more likely, that the fuel will get too hot and melt through the containment vessel.

With fusion, the difficulty is not slowing down the reaction, the problem is sustaining it. The amount of hydrogen in a fusion reactor is quite small. That's because fusion produces so much energy: e = mc², after all. One gram of hydrogen produces 339 gigajoules of energy, or 94 megawatt-hours. That means a 100 MW fusion reactor would use a couple of grams of hydrogen per hour: that's a couple of ounces a day. (It's also probably a hydrogen isotope -- deuterium and tritium, from heavy water.)

If something goes wrong in a fusion reactor, the magnetic field collapses, and the reaction stops. All that's left is a few ounces of hot hydrogen.

To stop a fusion reaction, you turn of the power. It's like blowing out a candle. The containment vessel does, however, need to be strong enough to contain the hydrogen plasma when the magnetic field drops.

A fusion reactor is probably a lot less dangerous than a fission reactor, but more dangerous than wind and solar because reactor cores become radioactive over time.

Drawbacks
Most magnetic confinement fusion reactions under consideration produce neutrons. Something needs to absorb those neutrons, heat up and turn turbines. Over time neutrons will affect the components of the reactor and its shielding, making them brittle and slightly radioactive, just as for existing fission reactors.

Some fusion reactions under consideration produce a radioactive isotope of hydrogen (tritium, or hydrogen 3), which has a half-life of 12.3 years. Tritium and old shielding have to be disposed of, but they're far less dangerous than fission byproducts like plutonium that are radioactive for millennia.

For spaceflight, these fast neutrons are reaction mass: the faster the better.

Is It for Real?
This is hard to say. Scientists have been on the brink of a fusion breakthrough for fifty years. They've used superconducting magnets in the past. Is Lockheed's approach that different? Have they miniaturized the reactor enough to remove the instabilities in the magnetic field that have plagued traditional tokamak designs for decades?

I can't say for sure. But this has the potential to totally change everything about energy production. With cheap, portable fusion reactors coal and natural gas plants will be totally obsolete: fuel for fusion is extracted from seawater. There's no need for miners to die miles beneath the surface of the earth, or for frackers to inject toxic chemicals into the earth.

Fusion plants will probably not be cheap initially, especially compared to wind and solar which are already becoming cheaper than coal and gas. Extracting deuterium and tritium from seawater will probably start out to be expensive and get cheaper over time, but will probably always be more expensive than free energy from the wind and sun.

Fusion is not a panacea because there is still the problem of disposing of radioactive reactor cores. But these are minor problems compared to radioactive waste from fission plants, and the CO2 emitted by burning fossil fuels.

That does make fusion plants good candidates to pick up the slack when wind and solar generation are slack.

And having the technology in our back pockets that allows us to go to the stars is probably the best insurance plan the human race can get.

Good Words

From a recent question on Quora...

The issue isn't Obama's performance. The issue is the effectiveness of conservative propaganda. Day in and day out they refuse to cooperate with him in government. I think the reason for this is that conservatives did everything they could to club Clinton in every illegitimate way. But they did their jobs as legislators. Clinton was still successful.

Then we had Bush. It may be that the conservative agenda is just so bad, so unworkable that it made Bush look like a guy attempting to put America in the dumper. Just from looking at its difficult to tell whether he was attempting to crash the economy in order to downsize it or was just completely lame. Certainly here in Kansas we're ready to call call conservative politics a failure.

Under Obama the question remains open whether its the conservative agenda to downsize government by creating economic catastrophe. They have certainly floated the idea during the debt ceiling debate.

Regardless, they needed to rehabilitate the Republican party after the Bush catastrophe. They couldn't repeat the mistake they made by cooperating with Clinton. The Republican party needed Obama to be a failure.

Their only chance at that was to refuse to cooperate with anything and mobilize the conservative propaganda machine to start criticising him. They have criticised him for their lack of cooperation. They have created issues both legislative and policy then criticised him for their lack of ability.

This continual... habitual... oppressive... Soviet like... spin and nonsense is simply taking its toll on the psychology of America. You are being co-opted by the bad guys that are corrupting our government if you pile on Obama repeating the nonsense of conservative propagandists. 

Look for the reasonable answer. Its not -Obama is dumb, inept and untalented. He is smart, educated, able and talented and if you start there, look at his accomplishments and ask what the problem is... you will conclude something different.

Amen.

A Job Killing Regulation or a Baby-Saving Law?

In 2013 Mayor Michael Bloomberg passed the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which requires employers make reasonable accommodations for pregnant workers. This is exactly the kind of law that conservatives bitch about when they yammer on and on about job-killing regulation.

But Bloomberg didn't sign the law just to irritate conservatives. He did it to protect women like Angelica Valencia, who was fired in August from her job at a potato-packing plant when she was three months pregnant.

She had a miscarriage (a spontaneous abortion) last year, and her doctor said she was at high risk for another one if she worked more than eight hours a day. At age 39 Valencia doesn't have a whole lot of time to wait to have kids. It's now or never.

Valencia made $8.70 an hour. Her husband drives a bus. They needed the income from the job just to pay the rent, and with a kid on the way they needed it that much more.

But the company didn't give a damn. Valencia was unaware of the law that should have protected her, so she let the company fire her.

Conservatives say they value family above all else, but they clearly believe that corporate profits are more important than family values, the health of employees, and the lives of the unborn. Where's the anti-abortion crowd here? They should be blasting companies that force pregnant women to work long hours under severe conditions.

How can conservatives possibly defend a company that refuses to grant women light duty during a pregnancy, knowing that it will likely cause a spontaneous abortion?

And you can't blame the woman. She wanted to keep her job and pay her own way. The article doesn't say whether Valencia was fired and eligible for unemployment compensation. Did the company say her termination was "for cause" and weasel out of paying umemployment? Did they expect her to go on welfare?

Some might argue that the company had her safety at heart, and didn't want her to work out of concern for the life of the child. But their response to the doctor's letter was:

“Unfortunately, we as a company are not able to allow you to continue work,” wrote Mr. Ferla, who warned that her high-risk pregnancy could put her “at risk” in a work environment that was fast-paced, very physical and involves machinery.

“Please understand we need a ‘full duty release' from the doctor,” he added, if she wanted to continue to work.

No: the company clearly did not care about her or the baby. They just wanted that letter from the doctor to avoid legal responsibility should the baby die.

And it's not just overwork that causes miscarriage. Certain chemicals will cause spontaneous abortion, including heavy metals (such as mercury released into the air from burning coal -- this is why coal plants are shutting down), organic solvents (paint thinners, dry cleaning fluid), numerous petrochemicals, and various drugs and gases used in medicine and dentistry. Many of these chemicals cause birth defects and cancer as well. Research and regulation are required to protect pregnant women -- and everyone else -- from exposure to these dangerous substances.

Some companies treat their employees fairly and help them start families. They make accommodations for pregnant women, and help them once the children are born. But a lot of companies don't. Shouldn't the law level the playing field, and reward companies that do right by their employees and, incidentally, the taxpayers?

That's what regulations are for: to protect Americans from bad employers, polluters, incompetent doctors and lawyers, usurers and scam artists.

Sure, there are bad regulations. Some have become outdated due to technological and social changes. Some were written by companies themselves and passed by their cronies in government to make it harder for competitors. Some were enacted in ignorance or ideology. These should be revised free from political and business interference.

The government grants companies corporate charters to absolve corporate officers of personal responsibility for corporate activities. The government in turn has the responsibility to regulate those activities to provide a level playing field for all corporations and to ensure the safety and well-being of the American people. And their unborn children.

Conservatives claim to be all about responsibility. Well, companies need to take responsibility for their employees and their products. Those responsibilities need to be clearly stated.

That's all regulations are.

Bad Move, Alison

I'm perplexed by Alison Grimes' refusal to say who she voted for in 2012. It's petty, childish, and most cowardly. More importantly, it signals the end of her candidacy as a Senator in Kentucky.

What she should have done is say, "Yes, I voted for him and yes I support some of the policies for which he stands like raising the minimum wage. However, I do not support his continued attack on the coal industry and would like to go to Washington to convince him to cease and desist." Obviously, they would have tied her to Barack Obama but so what? As I have said many times, put him on the ballot and let him kick the GOP's ass a third time.

Speaking of Barack Obama, I'm pretty amused by the hysteria over his "low" approval ratings. RCP average has him at 42 percent which is 4 points above his lowest single rating (38 percent, Sept 2014). Compare this to the last 8 presidents and their lowest approval ratings.

• George W. Bush: 25 percent in October 2008.

• Bill Clinton: 37 percent in May 1993.

• George H.W. Bush: 29 percent in July 1992.

• Ronald Reagan: 35 percent in January 1983.

• Jimmy Carter: 28 percent in June 1979.

• Gerald Ford: 37 percent in March 1975.

• Richard Nixon: 24 percent in August 1974

• Lyndon Johnson: 35 percent in 1968.

Doesn't really look all that bad now, does it?

The Democrats Have Already Won

Even though the election is two and half weeks away, the Democrats have already won.

Consider for a moment what happens if the GOP takes back the Senate (which I think they will). They will have one of two options. They can continue to behave like 12 year old boys, be stubborn and immovable, have temper tantrums, and play to their base with Obama hating. Or they can compromise and take credit for doing things they didn't want to give the president a full win on. Either way, the Democrats win.

If Republicans take the first route, they are fucked in 2016. Higher voter turnout will erase any victories gained this year with the GOP having to defend 24 of the 34 seats up for reelection in two years. The House will see losses as well. And, with a likely Hillary Clinton candidacy, the Democrats will see even higher voter enthusiasm as we could potentially elect our first woman president.

If Republicans take the second route, the country benefits and we actually get some things done we needed to get done six years ago.

Sally Kohn echoes much of this sentiment in a recent piece over at CNN. The fact that the Senate is still a contest does not bode well for the future of the GOP. Republicans tap dancing around the ACA is fucking hilarious. Even more funny is how desperate they seem.

Wasn't this election supposed to be about Obamacare? No, that didn't work. So Republicans tried to make the midterms about Benghazi. No luck there either. Now they're just generally fear-mongering around ISIS and Ebola and hoping that would work. But the constantly shifting Republican shell game shows how little substantive traction conservatives have with average voters outside their highly gerrymandered House districts. 

Every time they open their mouths, Republican candidates show that they habitually bash President Obama to distract from the impression that they have neither the intention nor ability to help solve urgent problems facing the country.

Yep.

On the point of traction with average voters...

Economic equality and reproductive freedom are basic priorities for women voters, a group that Republicans already had a tough time winning over. The GOP even commissioned its own poll that found women voters are "barely receptive" to Republican ideas and think the party is "intolerant" and "stuck in the past." By their own deeds, not to mention rhetoric, Republicans just keep reinforcing their war on women and driving voters away.

With all of this, I say the GOP picks option two after they take back the Senate.

Media Hysteria

Voter ID Laws Backfire Across The Country

Take a look at this story from my local newspaper.

Less anticipated, however, was the robust and sometimes creative backlash that has followed from Democrats and their allies, who are launching a spirited counteroffensive that strategists say could end up benefiting party turnout on Election Day.

Uh oh...:)

So, where, pray tell, is this happening?

In Wisconsin, a photo ID law signed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker led the mayor of liberal Madison to urge voting this November as an “act of defiance.” He wants city vans to take seniors to have their photos taken in time to vote.

North Carolina’s new voting laws, approved last year by the first GOP-led state Legislature since Reconstruction, spurred the NAACP to stage large-scale voter registration rallies that may explain why new Democratic registrations in some key counties are growing faster than new Republican registrations. 

And in Georgia, Democrats turned the court’s decision into an unexpected opportunity. After justices set aside the provision that required the state to obtain federal approval before changing voting rules, Democratic-led counties realized they had the authority to expand early voting in their districts. So polls will be open around Atlanta for the first time on Sundays.

I wonder if conservatives really knew what they were doing by supporting Voter ID laws. A couple of key losses in swing states because of this backlash would be exactly what they deserve.

Jose, Can You See?

This redubbed video of a Scott Walker campaign ad is hilarious. Even more hilarious, it makes more sense than the original.

Second Amendment Trumps the First in Utah

Anita Sarkeesian, a critic of the way women are portrayed in video games, was  forced to cancel a speech at Utah State University after the university could not guarantee her safety:

Tim Vitale, the spokesman, said that the school police told Ms. Sarkeesian that, under Utah law, they could not prevent attendees from bringing concealed weapons to the event. 

In Utah the rights of video game addicts to commit a massacre outweigh the rights of a woman to speak in public without fear of being killed like some sex object in a video game.

On Monday evening, members of the administration at Utah State University received an e-mail warning that a massacre would be carried out against attendees of the event.

“This will be the deadliest school shooting in American history and I’m giving you a chance to stop it,” said the e-mail, which bore the name Marc Lepine, who killed 14 women in a mass shooting in Montreal in 1989 before taking his own life.

Now, to see how ridiculously idiotic this situation is, imagine what the reaction of school officials would be if Ann Coulter were the woman speaking, and a misogynist Muslim calling himself Osama bin Laden sent an email threatening to commit a massacre during the speech to "silence that harridan."

Homeland Security would be all over it. They would spare no expense to track down the author of the email. If no suspects were apprehended, and Coulter had the guts to proceed with the speech this is how things would go down.

There would be a large police and FBI presence. Coulter would wear Kevlar and stand behind a bulletproof screen. If some "Muslim-looking" people showed up the FBI would arrest them on the spot, especially if they had weapons. But if by some miracle the FBI didn't arrest them, and let them into the auditorium with their weapons, they would certainly segregate them from the rest of the audience, perhaps even isolating them in a bullet-proof glass enclosure so they couldn't shoot anyone.

And if they didn't isolate suspected Muslims with weapons and allowed them to freely mingle with the crowd, and they suddenly started firing on the crowd during the speech, a small group of gunmen could easily kill dozens or hundreds of people. The cops couldn't even fire on them for fear of hitting human shields. Sure, a bunch of right-wing gun nuts would also show up and "guard" each armed Muslim, but since bad guys shoot first they're sitting ducks. And as as soon as one shot was fired, everyone would start shooting, and you'd have hundreds of friendly fire deaths.

I therefore submit that a Utah university president would never allow misogynist Muslims the opportunity to assassinate Ann Coulter. They wouldn't cite Utah law, they would say that they would do anything to protect their students. And we would all applaud them for saving society from the scourge of Islamic terrorism.

Yet Utah State University is perfectly willing to give misogynist gamers the opportunity to assassinate Anita Sarkeesian and anyone who would listen to her.

Conservatives seem to think there's some intrinsic difference between a Muslim terrorist who blows himself up at a marketplace, and a gun-loving American narcissist who murders twenty school children and then commits suicide. They're both terrorists, they're both criminals, and they're both alienated from society and want to strike out and hurt people in a blaze of delusional glory.

The petty details of what motivates them are irrelevant: the underlying psychopathy is the same. Islamic terrorism is no more heinous than school shootings.

Dead is dead.

Being Vulnerable Can Be A Good Thing

Is The World Becoming More Peaceful?

Yes, it is.

Pinker points out that during World War II, the human population lost 300 of every 100,000 people each year. During the Korean War it was in the 20s, before dropping into the teens during the Vietnam era. In the 1980s and 1990s, it fell into the single digits. For most of the 21st century it’s been below one war death per 100,000 people per year. 

There has been an uptick globally as a result of the civil war in Syria, doubling from 0.5 per 100,000 to 1. But Pinker says “you can’t compare 1 with 15 or 25 or 300.” Everywhere else in the world, the stats are still trending downward. The same is true for homicides.

Pretty fucking cool.

Suddenly, South Dakota

It looks like the race for the Senate seat in South Dakota isn't as much of a slam dunk for the Republicans originally thought.

According to the Survey USA/KOTA/KSFY/Aberdeen American News poll taken between Oct. 1 and Oct. 6, Rounds is only leading independent Larry Pressler 35-32 percent among likely voters. (Pressler is a former GOP senator who has not said how he would caucus if elected.) Not far behind is Democrat Rick Weiland, with 28 percent.

Add in the fact that the Democrats are now going to spend $1 million dollars in the cheap advertising market there and suddenly the GOP is playing defense. This story could also have an impact on Rounds.

No doubt, this year's elections are going to be interesting. A common theme that I have noticed among the Democrats is a fear based strategy with the express intent of getting people out to vote. When the media speaks of Republican waves based on certain polls, the Democrats send out emails and voter registration goes up in the battleground states.

Take, for example, the Quinnipiac poll from mid September that showed Republican challenger Bob Beauprez 10 points ahead of John Hickenlooper in the Colorado governor's race. The Democrats made a lot of hay out of that one and now take a look at the polls. Hickenlooper has led in every one except the Fox poll in which they are tied. Of course, no one really took the Quinnipiac poll seriously anyway so this could be just a normal readjustment.

It's also important to note the number of likely voters when looking at these polls. RCP shows how many LVs there are with each poll. The CBS poll, for example, has nearly 1700 likely voters while the Fox poll has only 700. Obviously, the CBS poll is more accurate with a greater number of LVs.

We are only three weeks out, folks, and things are likely to get more exciting. I'm still at 51-49, GOP favor, for the Senate...the House staying more or less the same...and somewhere between 3-5 GOP governors getting the boot.

GOP PLAN 2014

Shit Your Pants!

100% Renewable

Burlington Vermont is now running on 100% renewable energy and I think that's pretty fucking cool. It's especially wonderful when you consider that the state of Vermont is planning on becoming the first state to be 100% renewable.

I wonder how many more states will follow suit...

A Cure for Diabetes on the Horizon?

A group of scientists at Harvard announced that they have found a way to make embryonic stem cells produce insulin:

The long-sought advance could eventually lead to new ways to help millions of people with diabetes.

Right now, many people with diabetes have to regularly check the level of sugar in their blood and inject themselves with insulin to keep the sugar in their blood in check. It's an imperfect treatment.

"This is kind of a life-support for diabetics," says Doug Melton, a stem-cell researcher at Harvard Medical School. "It doesn't cure the disease and leads to devastating complications of the disease."

People with poorly controlled diabetes can suffer complications such as blindness, amputations and heart attacks.

If this result holds up under further study, it could be a real cure for diabetes. The implications for the nation's health and the cost of health care is huge. Diabetes cost an estimated $245 billion in 2012, including direct medical costs associated with diabetes and indirect costs such as lost productivity.

But the cost in human misery is incalculable. I have a sister-in-law whose son developed type I diabetes in elementary school. For the next several years her entire life revolved around measuring his blood sugar, planning out everything that that he would eat, and fretting every time he was late coming home from school that he had lapsed into a diabetic coma and lay dying alone.

But, incredibly, there are people who oppose this research:

"If, like me, someone considers the human embryo to be imbued with the same sorts of dignity that the rest of us have, then in fact this is morally problematic," says Daniel Sulmasy, a doctor and bioethicist at the University of Chicago. "It's the destruction of an individual unique human life for the sole purpose of helping other persons."

Embryos are alive, and they contain human DNA, but they are not people: once they have been prepared for in vitro fertilization and frozen, they are just a cluster of cells. Using embryonic cells from these sources to cure diabetes is no less ethical than transplanting the heart from a brain-dead victim of a car accident, or using cadaver ligaments to fix a torn ACL, or cadaver corneas to restore vision in the blind.

If the sentiment that unique human lives should not be destroyed for helping other persons were consistently employed, opponents of embryonic stem cell research might have some moral integrity. But most of the detractors also favor the death penalty, in which a unique human life is destroyed for petty revenge, and want anyone to be free to buy a handgun on demand and to shoot anyone they think might hurt them, and if they mistakenly kill an innocent person believe the shooter should suffer no consequences.

In any case, this will not be the final step in researching a cure for diabetes:

Melton thinks he can also make insulin cells using another kind of stem cell known as an induced pluripotent stem cell, which doesn't destroy any embryos. He's trying to figure out if it works as well, and hopes to start testing his insulin cells in people with diabetes within three years.

The goal for scientists is to figure out how switch a patient's own cells into such a pluripotent stem cell, which means no embryos would be involved. But scientists first have to figure out how stem cells differentiate into insulin cells naturally before they can coax adult cells back into stem cells.

Where do the stem cells whose dignity people like Sulmasy want to protect come from? Embryos that are left over after in vitro fertilization procedures. Embryos that would otherwise have to be destroyed are this very moment piling up by the hundreds of thousands in liquid nitrogen vats at in vitro fertilization clinics.

Does it really make more sense to incinerate those leftover cells, or to use a few of them to find a cure that save millions of people from debilitating and deadly diseases?

Train Your Wife

Could These Three Governors Be Going Bye Bye In A Month?

Take a look at these three governors...







They are Sam Brownback (Kansas), Rick Scott (Florida) and Scott Walker (Wisconsin). While everyone is hyper focused on the Senate and Republican "waves," I think that these three guys are all going to lose their jobs in a month. All of them have employed conservative policies in in their states and they haven't really gone over very well. Their opponents are ahead of them in most of the polls and their constituents are not happy at all.

So, if there is a wave of conservatism sweeping the nation, why are there guys in such trouble?

Obama's Numbers

From FactCheck.org. 

The accompanying article really shows how looking at just one of these numbers isn't a barometer for measuring his success. So, what does it say when looking at all of the data?

Blank Jobs Plan

From a recent John Boehner tweet...

Largely accurate except there should be at least one point written which states "Against Barack Obama's plan."

A Decline in Poverty

In 2013, poverty declined in the United States and it went down faster for children which is very good news.

It was the first meaningful decline in poverty for children since 2000, and for the overall population since 2006.The declines are due largely to an improving job market, which has lifted the living standards not only for the newly employed but also for their children.

“Every child in this country matters. So while it is significant that child poverty decreased in this single year, the real takeaway is that it demonstrates poverty is not unsolvable,” Hannah Matthews of CLASP, a nonprofit group seeking to improve conditions for low-income people, wrote after the Census Bureau released the new numbers.

Obviously, there is a great deal of room for improvement but this news is most welcome!

A Heated Discussion About Islam

How Far They Have Come...

Repeat And Spread This Every Day Until The Election

From a recent Facebook post...

After the 2008 elections the Republicans were one more Election Day loss away from ceasing to be a viable national party. They had lost the '06 & '08 elections so badly that they became desperate. Out of that desperation came the strategy to oppose anything that Democrats in general and POTUS Obama in particular favored. 

This desperate strategy was hatched on the night of POTUS Obama's first inauguration and it was hoped that it would gum up the works of government to the point where enough people who were captivated and enthusiastic about the Obama presidency would become disenchanted by the lack of substantial progress on the most problematic issues, sit out future elections and stay out of the political process. Again, this was/is a strategy borne out of desperation but it was designed with some very deep-seeded traits (like the short attention spans of and instant gratification mindset of so many Americans) in mind too, particularly turning budding progressives off to the entire political process. Sorry to say that this desperate strategy worked better than the Republicans could have ever hoped, especially in the 2010 mid-term elections, when voter turnout nationwide plummeted to 40%. 

Liberal talking heads like filmmaker Michael Moore were so turned off by the lack of progress on key issues like financial reform and the lack of either single-payer healthcare or the public option being part of the final ACA that they actually encouraged progressives to not vote in 2010.

Republicans had nothing to lose by becoming professional obstuctionists as long as it succeeded in turning people (most of whom would probably vote for Democrats) off to the entire political process. The Republicans KNOW their base WILL turn out to vote as long as they continue obstructing and advocating what most of us consider policies and strategies that are off a cliff crazy. Despite the continuing high number of absolutely crazy policies advocated by Republicans, despite Republican pols continuing to disparage women, African-Americans, Latinos, gay-Americans, working class Americans of both genders and all ethnic backgrounds, despite the lack of even cloaking their ties to and obedience to corporate masters, the Republicans are looking at a very realistic chance of increasing their majority in the House of Representatives and gaining the majority in the US Senate.

Never seen anything like it in my life. It's like the more mean-spirited Republicans become the better their prospects become for the midterm elections. And this success is primarily (overwhelmingly) due to progressives (liberals) sulking and staying away from the process. 

Well, if progressives stay away from this year's elections ... quite possibly the most important midterm election in modern history ... and the Republicans win the day on Nov. 4, they should no longer wonder why things are so gummed up, why corporate interests win out on every issue or problem, why politics is such a filthy, cutthroat business because if they want to know who's fault it is, the first thing progressives who didn't vote should do is go look in a mirror.

This is exactly the message that needs to be repeated over and over again between now and election day.

President Obama Still Not Destroying The Economy

Unemployment rate drops to 5.9% as job growth rebounds

The economy added a robust 248,000 net new jobs, and the unemployment rate dropped 0.2 percentage point to 5.9%, the lowest since July 2008, the Labor Department said. Job growth in July and August also was revised upward by a total of 69,000. That included lifting August's disappointing initial estimate of 142,000 net new jobs to 180,000.

Increasing Inequality

Check this out...

So, right around the time regulations started to loosen up in the late 1970s, things seemed to switch quite a bit, didn't they? When the economy grows, Pavlina R. Tcherneva illustrates quite cleary who benefits.

Buzz In The Tiny World Of Poll Nerds

I've been pretty amused by the Twitter war that has blown up between forecasters Sam Wang and Nate Silver. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the blogsphere (especially the right wing blogsphere) and social media need guys like Silver and Wang to thump their digital chests and pwn someone in comments (hmm...Silver and Wang...sounds like a gay porn title:))

In my view, Wang has been too optimistic about the Democrats' chances in taking over the Senate, although his latest model is line with my current prediction as well (51 R, 49 D). Yet, it's important to remember that Silver's model shows the Republicans with a 59.3 percent chance of winning the Senate and the Democrats with a 40.7 of holding on to the Senate. People look at this and say, "Oh, well the GOP are ahead so they will win." That's not how it works in statistics. Wang should know this when he admonishes Silver for being "wrong" about Montana and North Dakota. Silver wasn't wrong. Even though the odds favored the GOP in those races, they still lost. That's what happens sometimes.

The Republicans have been pretty smart this election cycle and kept the real nutters off the ballot. Their candidates have just enough Tea Party in them to pass muster and nowhere near the level of sheer moonbattery to drive midterm voters away. But they have to be careful.

Once the 2014 election is over, the 2016 election officially begins. The tables are going to be turned 180 degrees and the GOP is going to have to defend 24 seats to the Dems 10. If they spend two years acting like children and stonewalling the president, they'll lose the Senate, several seats in the House, and any chance of winning the White House. At half of the approval rating of the president, they will have zero wiggle room to have tantrums. Their future as a party depends on their willingness to compromise because their base is very old and the Democrats' base is young.

That's why I chuckle when I hear this year's GOP candidates say they are going to take it to the president and force their agenda down his throat. Yeah, like that's going to play well in 2016. No, sorry, I predict that if they do win back the Senate, they are going to cave on some issues...just like they always have before...and piss off their "no compromise" base.

Best Album Cover Ever!

Why Do They Vote Republican Again?

The clip below is really bad quality (looks like a smart phone recording) but pay attention to the guy at the 1 minute 40 second mark...



 Seriously...WTF?

If voters were more educated, Republicans would cease to exist as a party because so few people would vote for them.

What Ever Happened to Good Old-Fashioned Police Work?

The poor FBI. Apple is going to make their job impossible by encrypting the contents of the iPhone 6.

The phone encrypts emails, photos and contacts based on a complex mathematical algorithm that uses a code created by, and unique to, the phone’s user — and that Apple says it will not possess.

The result, the company is essentially saying, is that if Apple is sent a court order demanding that the contents of an iPhone 6 be provided to intelligence agencies or law enforcement, it will turn over gibberish, along with a note saying that to decode the phone’s emails, contacts and photos, investigators will have to break the code or get the code from the phone’s owner.

Breaking the code, according to an Apple technical guide, could take “more than 5 1/2 years to try all combinations of a six-character alphanumeric passcode with lowercase letters and numbers.” (Computer security experts question that figure, because Apple does not fully realize how quickly the N.S.A. supercomputers can crack codes.) 

Since this code is "created by" the phone's user I also question that figure. If these codes are anything like the passwords most people use for their email accounts, it will take about five minutes to decrypt 80% of all the iPhones out there.

And, yet again, the FBI is trotting out the hoary old "kidnapper" fable:

He cited kidnapping cases, in which exploiting the contents of a seized phone could lead to finding a victim, and predicted there would be moments when parents would come to him “with tears in their eyes, look at me and say, ‘What do you mean you can’t’ ” decode the contents of a phone.

Huh? If you've got the kidnapper's cell phone, you've probably got the kidnapper. Which means you've pretty much got the case solved 99.9% of the time. Yeah, we've all seen this TV show: the cops have captured the kidnapper, but his victim is buried out in the woods somewhere with only 37 minutes of air, and if they don't get him to confess the victim will suffocate and there won't be any evidence with which to prosecute the bastard.

But does that ever happen in real life? I can't think of an actual case like that. In all the recent high-profile kidnappings around here, the victim disappears, the cops don't find anything for weeks, eventually they find the perp, and it's another six months before they track down the corpse buried in the woods or dumped in a lake. Or the victim has been living with the perp for the last five years as his sex slave. Or the victim is a child in a nasty custody battle.

And all those same TV shows tell us that if you don't find a kidnapping victim alive within 24-48 hours, odds are you never will. And since cops rarely investigate missing persons until they've been gone for 24 hours, what are the odds that being able to decrypt a cellphone will make it easier to find that kidnapping victim?

Does it make any sense have a legal system that makes it trivial for cops to snoop on 300 million Americans in order to make it slightly easier for them to solve a case that happens maybe once every 10 years?

What did the FBI do 20 years ago, before cell phones? Back then, kidnappers just remembered everything, or wrote it down on pieces of paper they could eat when they were gonna get caught. Law enforcement couldn't track everyone's whereabouts through cell phone towers, or read your email off the backups on your ISP's server without ever setting foot in your house. Kidnappers used paper maps instead of GPS units, which left absolutely no electronic trace whatsoever.

Back then, the FBI had to rely on old-fashioned police work and deductive reasoning. If you watch those same TV shows, you learn that other forensic techniques (pollen, trace evidence, telephone logs, cell phone tracking, lists of known associates from police files) lead them to the victims just as easily as text messages, contact lists and cell phone photos.

Is the FBI just getting lazy? Cell tower tracking data and call logs from the phone company will also lead them to co-conspirators, and kidnappers can't delete that data from their phones. And if the kidnappers are smart enough to turn their phones off so they aren't tracked and not call their partners in crime, odds are they're smart enough not to put anything useful in their phones in the first place: if you want to keep a secret, don't tell anyone and don't write it down. Anywhere. It didn't take Edward Snowden to tell us that: anyone watching any cop show for the last 20 years knows it inside and out.

The public should have the right to protect themselves against the theft of their data by criminals. If we should have the right to protect ourselves with guns that can just as easily be used to murder dozens of innocent victims at a time, shouldn't we have the right to use encryption to protect ourselves from blackmail and theft of intellectual property? If a business competitor steals your phone, you should be able to encrypt the data so they can't profit. If Kate Upton loses her cell phone, she should have the expectation that her nude selfies will not be spewed across the Internet.

Speaking of nude selfies, I would say that Apple is not going far enough with its encryption: several celebrities' online accounts were recently hacked and embarrassing photos were released. That should be much harder to do. In any case, everything in the Cloud should be encrypted to prevent poorly paid sysadmins from rummaging through your personal files and selling them to TMZ or your competitors.

The FBI is just whining. To reiterate, if these files are encrypted with a user-supplied code, that code will be relatively easy to guess most of the time. If it's not easy to guess, then it's probably not easy to remember, and that means any would-be kidnappers will have it written down on a piece of paper. Probably in their desk at home, or in their wallet, or on a USB flash drive in their possession.

In other words, easily found by good, old-fashioned detective work.

Kidnapping is a red herring. The FBI really wants contact lists to be unencrypted so they can more easily track down organized crime, drug dealing, terrorism and insider trading. Those are all things worth fighting, but the FBI shouldn't be lying about why they want to be able to spy on us.

Things I have learned from my Facebook feed recently...

1. Barack Obama is Lord Voldermort
2. The Koch Brothers are Lord Voldermort
3. The federal government is practicing black magic.
4. Monsanto is practicing black magic.
5. Climate change, nuclear energy, GMOs and vaccines are all black magic practiced with nefarious intent by THEM.

The Military To Fox News: Fuck you!

An Open Letter To Fox News About 'Boobs On The Ground'

Dear Mr. Bolling and Mr. Gutfeld,

We are veterans of the United States armed forces, and we are writing to inform you that your remarks about United Arab Emirates Air Force Major Mariam Al Mansouri were unwarranted, offensive, and fundamentally opposed to what the military taught us to stand for.

First, foremost, and most obvious to everyone other than yourselves, your remarks were immensely inappropriate. Your co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle was so right to call attention to an inspiring story of a woman shattering glass ceilings in a society where doing so is immeasurably difficult. We never heard an answer to her question: why did you feel so compelled to “ruin her thing?”

As it turns out, women have been flying combat aircraft since before either of you were born.Over 1,000 Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASPs) flew during World War II. Seeing as U.S. Army Air Forces Commander “Hap” Arnold said “Now in 1944, it is on the record that women can fly as well as men,” we can probably guess he thought their parking was adequate. The WASP legacy reaches into the present day; on 9/11, then Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney scrambledher F-16. Completely unarmed, she was ready to lay down her own life to prevent further devastating attacks on American soil.

Thus the skill of women as fighter pilots is well established. And before you jump to the standby excuse that you were “just making a joke” or “having a laugh,” let the men amongst our number preemptively respond: You are not funny. You are not clever. And you are not excused. Perhaps the phrase “boys will be boys”—inevitably uttered wherever misogyny is present—is relevant. Men would never insult and demean a fellow servicemember; boys think saying the word ‘boobs’ is funny.

The less obvious implication of your remarks, however, is that by offending an ally and cheapening her contribution, you are actively hurting the mission. We need to send a clear message that anyone, male or female, who will stand up to ISIS and get the job done is worthy of our respect and gratitude.

We issue an apology on your behalf to Major Al Mansouri knowing that anything your producers force you to say will be contrived and insincere. Major, we’re sincerely sorry for the rudeness; clearly, these boys don’t take your service seriously, but we and the rest of the American public do.

Very Respectfully,

Michael Breen, U.S. Army
Shawn VanDiver, U.S. Navy
Kristen Rouse, U.S. National Guard
Andrea Marr, U.S. Navy
Kristen Kavanaugh, U.S. Navy
Richard Wheeler, U.S. Army
Leo Cruz, U.S. Navy
Aryanna Hunter, U.S. Army
Geoff Orazem U.S. Marine Corps
Scott Cheney-Peters, U.S. Navy
Jonathan Murray, U.S. Marine Corps
Timothy Kudo, U.S. Marine Corps
Welton Chang, U.S. Army
Michael Smith, U.S. Army
Gordon Griffin, U.S. Marine Corps
Kelsey Campbell, U.S. Air Force
Matt Runyon, U.S. Army
Richard Weir, U.S. Marine Corps
Scott Holcomb, U.S. Army
Jon Gensler, U.S. Army
Erik Brine, U.S. Air Froce
Rob Miller, U.S. Marine Corps
Josh Weinberg, U.S. Army
John Wagner, U.S. Air Force
Terron Sims II, U.S. Army
Sonia Fernandez, U.S. Marine Corps
Dan Hartnett, U.S. Army
Dan Futrell, U.S. Army
John Margolick, U.S. Marine Corps
Daniel Savage, U.S. Army
Matt Pelak, U.S. Army,
LaRue Robinson, U.S. Army
Anthony Woods, U.S Army
Margot Beausey, U.S. Navy
Dustin Cathcart, U.S. Army
Kayla Williams, U.S. Army
Dan Espinal, U.S. Army
Jonathan Hopkins, U.S. Army
Tony Johnson, U.S. Navy
Andy Moore, U.S. Army
Kevin Johnson, U.S. Army
Brett Hunt, U.S. Army
Russell Galeti, U.S. Army
Gail Harris, U.S. Navy
Katelyn Geary van Dam, U.S. Marine Corps
Mick Crnkovich, U.S. Army
Jonathan Freeman, U.S. Army
Chris Finan, U.S. Air Force
Robert Mishev, U.S. Air Force
Matt Zeller, U.S. Army
William Allen, U.S. Marine Corps
Sharmistha Mohpatra, U.S. Army
Adam Tiffen, U.S. Army
Alex Cornell du Houx, U.S. Navy
Jason Cain, U.S. Army
Rob Bracknell, U.S. Marine Corps
Karen Courington, U.S. Air Force
Justin Graf, U.S. Army
Lach Litwer, U.S. Army
Andrew Borene, U.S. Marine Corps

False Patriotism and Scoring Points In A Game No One Else Is Playing

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Election 2014 Update

Now that we are sufficiently past the Labor Day holiday, we can take a look at the polls for November election and see a much clearer picture. At this point in time, things don't look good at all for the Democrats.

The two main sources I use in predicting elections are RealClear Politics and Nate Silver's 538 Blog. The former currently has 45 D and 47 R with 9 tossups so let's start with that baseline and build from there. Silver has Michigan and New Hampshire going to the Dems with an 82 percent chance and North Carolina doing the same with a 76 percent chance. That puts the Senate at 47-47 with six seats up for grabs. This is exactly where control for the Senate will be fought.

Alaska, Arkansas, Colorado, Georgia, Iowa, and Kansas.

Before we focus on these states, it's worth a moment to note Kentucky and Louisiana. It looks like Mitch McConnell is firmly in control of winning back his seat. Alison Grimes is a great candidate but she hasn't been able to make any headway. Given all the data that goes into predicting elections, the most important of which is turnout, things don't look good for her at all. Nor do they look good for Mary Landrieu with RCP having Louisiana as a lean R and part of that 47. She is also not a good candidate and will not get the 50 percent of the vote needed to prevent a runoff which will occur in December. At this point, I predict that this election will tip the outcome of the Senate. More on that in a moment.

Colorado will go for the Democrats. There is also an election for the state's governor there which means larger voter turnout. That always favors the Democrats. John Hickenlooper is in a tight race but I think he will prevail. So will Tom Udall despite the recent Quinnipiac poll which no one really takes seriously (compare them to other polls). I also think Iowa will go for the incredibly flawed candidate, Bruce Braley. There will also be a bigger turnout in this state because of the gubernatorial election (event though Terry Branstead will win) and thus, more Democratic voters. Iowa also does not elect women Senators.

So, that brings the Dems to 49 but at this point, I think that is all they are going to get. Silver has Alaska, Arkansas and Georgia all going R with over a 70 percent chance and I think he is right with one small caveat. The Alaska voters are very hard to poll and turnout is always low yet still favors incumbents so everyone could be off on this one. But let's say it goes red so now the GOP has 50 and that leaves us with Kansas. Greg Orman was recently courted by the failed Tea Party candidate, Milton Wolf and I think that he will eventually caucus with the Republicans. He could surprise everyone, however, and be the first truly independent candidate but Kansas is a red state so it's likely he will want to please his voters. That puts the GOP at 51.

Of course, on election night, it will be 50 GOP, 49 Dems with Louisiana into a runoff. Suddenly all eyes will be on Mary Landrieu and I don't think she will be up to the task. Millions will be poured into the runoff but it won't work for the Democrats. At this point, I predict that the Senate will be 51 R, 49 Dem. 

Could there be twists, turns and surprises which will alter my prediction?

Naturally. I could be off on Orman (a former Democrat) and the anti-GOP sentiment in Kansas, due to the absolute failure of the conservative economic policies of Sam Brownback, could tip him into caucusing with the Democrats. Or Begich, Pryor could pull it out. It's very hard to unseat an incumbent. Perhaps Iowa could surprise and elect a woman.

No doubt, things are going to be very exciting in the next few weeks!

How Much Longer Is This Gonna Go On?

Ever since Ferguson many whites seem to think that blacks are being hypersensitive about getting stopped by cops. Here's a reality check: this dashboard video shows what happens when a black man, Levar Jones, is stopped by a white Trooper, Sean Groubert, for a seatbelt violation in South Carolina.

This time around, however, the cop has been charged with assault. Here's a summary of what went down:

Jones was stopped Sept. 4 as he pulled into a convenience store on a busy Columbia road. With the camera recording, Groubert pulls up without his siren on as Jones is getting out of his vehicle to go into the store.

"Can I see your license please?" Groubert asks.

As Jones turns and reaches back into his car, Groubert shouts, "Get outa the car, get outa the car." He begins firing before he has finished the second sentence. There is a third shot as Jones staggers away, backing up with his hands raised, and then a fourth.

From the first shot to the fourth, the video clicks off three seconds.

Jones' wallet can be seen flying out of his hands as he raises them.

Groubert's lawyer, Barney Giese, said the shooting was justified because the trooper feared for his life and the safety of others. Police officers are rarely charged in South Carolina. In August, a prosecutor refused to file criminal charges against a York County deputy who shot a 70-year-old man after mistaking his cane for a shotgun during an after-dark traffic stop.

The defense lawyer's argument is preposterous: he essentially is saying this his client should go free because he shot an innocent man for complying with the orders of a police officer. This is like one of those dirty cop movies: if you want to kill a suspect, tell him to do something, and when he does it, pretend that you were afraid he was going to do something else. If he doesn't comply, you can shoot him for disobeying orders. It's win-win!

Black men have to deal with this crap all the time, and without the dashboard cam we would have no idea what really happened, and the cop would have walked away with a commendation for being so "vigilant."

But video cameras have their limitations: much of the action is out of the frame; Groubert can't be seen, and Jones is no longer visible after a few seconds. It's just dumb luck that things were lined up properly: if Groubert had been just a little smarter, and pointed his car in a slightly different direction, he would be getting a commendation for saving the lives of all the people at the convenience store. You gotta wonder: is the dashboard cam intentionally oriented to capture as little of the action as possible? Why doesn't it fully capture all the action in front of the vehicle, as one would naturally expect?

Right-wing closet racists will blame this all on Jones. As everyone knows, Jones should have had the "talk," which explains how black men must deal with the police: they should move extremely slowly. They should tell the officer what they're going to do, then ask permission to do it in simple terms that a four-year-old can understand, with as "white" an accent as they can muster. Then they should move only after verbal confirmation from the officer, and then only as slowly as an arthritic 90-year-old man

To be fair, cops do get shot in cases like this. A month before this shooting, Michael Pimentel, the chief of police in Elemendorf, Texas, stopped Joshua Manuel Lopez at 11:30 AM and was killed at a in a subsequent "altercation." It appears that Pimentel was after Lopez for spray painting city vehicles.

The suspect had an outstanding warrant for graffiti. None of the stories I can find explains exactly what happened. My question is, was Pimentel killed by his own service weapon, or did Lopez have a gun? If Pimentel was in fact shot with his own weapon, it's clear he was a victim of his own shoddy police work.

A lot of the stops cops make on blacks and Hispanics are for trivial stuff like this, frequently for an unfastened seatbelt, or minor traffic violations, or suspected marijuana possession, things they never bother with in ritzy white neighborhoods. They call it "broken windows" policing, and they claim it gets results and they insist the numbers bear them out.

But when you stop blacks at 10 times the rate that you stop whites, of course you're going to get 10 times as many people holding drugs, and 10 times as many people who resent being harassed by the cops and resist arrest. And 10 times as many "unfortunate incidents."

Even More Diversity!

Finally, A Decline...

For the first time since 1980, the number of federal inmates has fallen. The drop in nearly 5,000 inmates comes as a direct result of the polices of Attorney General Eric Holder.

Holder wants to reduce the number a further 10,000 by 2016, which would be enough to leave six maximum security prisons empty. His package of policing and justice reforms is designed to divert nonviolent criminals away from prison and is seen as a rebuke of the so-called 1994 “crime bill,” which expanded the list of felony crimes, pumped $10 billion into new prisons, and gave incentives to states to mass incarcerate even low level offenders.

Considering we have only 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's inmates, I'd say this is a very large step in the right direction. My hope is that our government goes even further and begins the process of decriminalizing drugs.

Prohibition never works.

Another Responsible Gun Owner

Idaho professor shoots himself in foot two months after state legalizes guns on campuses

How many US citizens accidentally shoot themselves every year?

Good Words